Popular Topics

Cooking with Tea

Cooking With Tea

We at Arbor Teas want to inspire you to think outside the pot. Yes, a perfectly steeped cup of tea holds much tradition and most definitely nourishes the body and mind, but there are many more ways – both savory and sweet – to use these fragrant leaves. Think saturating tea as an infusion into milk or cream, stocks or sauces, crushing to form a substantial base for a dry rub, or heating directly in the frying pan as you would to coax the intensity from any spice layered into a stir-fried-type dish. The possibilities are endless, invite much creativity and encourage playfulness. Submit your own recipe for inclusion in our Cooking with Tea recipes and earn 100 rewards points!

Many of the recipes included below are created especially for Arbor Teas by Olivia May at From the Kitchen of Olivia. Olivia is an avid baker and home cook who occasionally blogs about her kitchen exploits. She humbly requests that we disclose her lack of formal culinary training, which one would never guess! Ironically, her background is in gustatory science!

Breakfast

Lunch

Dinner

Desserts

Drinks

SUPER Chai Vegan Pumpkin Muffins

Vegan muffins, packed with delicious healthy goodness! Based on a recipe originally found on lunchboxbunch.com, a customer swapped in Arbor Teas Organic Masala Chai Black Tea to create a new, SUPER chai muffin!

A great way to infuse the Rooibos taste in a homemade batch of applesauce. Not only does Cinnamon Rooibos work, but Vanilla Almond Rooibos as well. I purchased a Rooibos sampler and I am having fun trying them all. The flavor is exquisite!

A warm smoothie? Does not sound all that appetizing to us either, but wait! After a long, chilly winter of drinking cold smoothies, a hot one actually makes a lot of sense. This delicious smoothie is fortified with energy and nutrients…

Choose your own adventure! This recipe is filled with decisions... Fried or Baked? Caffeinated or Not? Doughnuts or Donuts? Try out these two very different and customizable approaches to making chai-spiced donuts. Perfect for the Fall!

Honeybush tea jelly makes fantastic PB&J sandwiches! Its woody sweetness balances the tartness of the homemade apple pectin and it is naturally caffeine-free - perfect for the kids! Or combine with nuts and spices and stuff into apple dumplings...

Commercially available yogurts are usually heavily sweetened, sometimes artificially colored, and often excessively priced. Making your own is economical and a good way to avoid highly processed sugar, while providing ...

Commercially available yogurts are usually heavily sweetened, sometimes artificially colored, and often excessively priced. Making your own is economical and a good way to avoid highly processed sugar, while providing ...

Green rooibos blended with roasted butternut squash, garlic, onions and cream combine for a wonderfully rich and herbal wintertime soup. Whips up without too much trouble and freezes nicely for a meal at the ready.

Matcha's deep green hue and flavor add a lot of appeal to home made pasta. Inspired by the green of this past spring, Olivia made Matcha Ravioli and filled it with a green pea and Italian white bean puree, and topped it with a garlic scape-kale pesto. So very green!

Sweet with piquant heat and spiced just so with orange, cinnamon, and clove from the Holiday Spice Black Tea. Use it to top cheese and crackers for a quick snack or appetizer, mix with ketchup for a fancy chili dipping sauce, or dollop over your take-out ramen bowl to add a festive touch...

If you zapped a vanilla Chai latte with a "turn into ice cream" gun, this recipe would be the result. It's smooth, creamy, sweet and delicious, and best of all, it's got just the right taste of all your favorite Chai spices. Now you can have a Chai latte as a hot treat OR a cold treat!

In this special shortbread recipe, dried Tulsi leaves are toasted to intensify the flavor of the essential oils before being mixed into the butter-laden dough. Once baked, a layer of tempered chocolate is poured over the cooling shortbread, creating an incomparable cookie meant to be offered devotedly to your beloved.

Besides flavor, one of the best uses for matcha powder in baking is to take advantage of its deep green hue as a natural food colorant. These delicious green-tinged cookies cutout in the shape of trees make a unique addition to a cookie plate with a woodland or festive holiday theme...

Inspired by Christina Tosi’s Momofuku Milk Bar, Olivia created a Thai Tea Parfait that has a creamy gelatin base, with a cloud-like mix of Thai tea, dulce de leche and tamarind, which is layered with fresh coconut curd and a crispy almond topping...

When I think of Thanksgiving, I think of pumpkin pie! I tried spicing up my pumpkin pie this year by adding masala chai to my pumpkin pie filling. The result was a pumpkin custard that had a richer, deeper spice flavor, and a sugary sweet top...

Choose your own adventure! This recipe is filled with decisions... Fried or Baked? Caffeinated or Not? Doughnuts or Donuts? Try out these two very different and customizable approaches to making chai-spiced donuts. Perfect for the Fall!

In the celebratory spirit of this inaugural “cooking with tea” post, and the joy brought through collaboration among friends, let’s have organic matcha tea cakes and ice cream! Matcha, traditionally ...

I used to buy Komboucha, but it was expensive and I found that some brands had a lot of caffeine. So I started making my own. Now it's pennies a serving rather than $3. And it's caffeine free so I can get my probiotic boost any time of day!